The play received a successful, script-in-hand reading in New York City this time last year, and now Natale will get to see his story move another big step closer to a full production, with five public workshop performances at the Fourth Street Theatre in Manhattan March 6 to 8.

"All of the big pieces were there last year, but we've been going over it with a fine tooth comb, line by line," Natale said last week of the revisions that have been done with his director Ross Evans and with producer-actor Sean Hudock. "We've just been going over it meticulously for the past year."

The March production will be done in a theater with a set and costumes and with no scripts in hand. While the five performances are, technically, a workshop situation, the added design elements will make it feel much more like a professional production than the February 2013 reading in a midtown studio space.

"We were asking people to suspend their disbelief last year, but this time we have a beautifully designed set and costumes," he said.

"And I will finally get sand," Natale added, laughing, of a more realistic presentation of the play's New England seaside home than he had last year.

"Room at the End of the Hall" follows the reunion/road trip of brothers Malky and Doug, who return to their closed-up family home in search of a diary they hope will contain answers to a terrible tragedy in their past. As they try to get into the house -- their keys don't work properly -- we learn about the brothers' past relationship, which has consisted of Doug coping with Malky's mental illness and getting him out of one jam after another.

At the March performances, Hudock will once again be playing Doug and Claybourne Elder will return as Malky.

Natale said he considers himself very lucky to have kept his production team together for this new run of shows. "Room" is one of the first public ventures of the Wild Root company that Hudock formed recently to produce the work of new writers (he and Natale have been friends since they attended Greenwich High School together).

"The play has been a dream come true for me and you rarely get the cast you imagined. I certainly had Sean in mind when I wrote it, but Claybourne is so great in this," the playwright said of the Drama Desk Award nominee.

"All of the stars have aligned for me," Natale said of keeping his director and cast together for a year.

"It's an intricate play and the relationship between the brothers gets tighter and deeper. ... It's such a simple story, but such a complex relationship. I think it is so much more complex now that the two actors know each other well," the playwright said of what Hudock and Elder have taught him about "Room at the End of the Hall."

Trumbull high school student Larissa Mark will receive the first Dramatists Guild of America, Inc. Defender Award on Monday, Feb. 24, for her work in support of the Thespian Society's production of "Rent."

Mark will get the prize at the Lamb's Club in New York City as part of the Dramatists Guild's annual awards night.

Mark is president of her school's Thespian Society, which had planned to stage Jonathan Larson's musical "Rent" in March 2014 until principal Marc Guarino put the show on hold last fall after he determined it was too controversial.

Mark launched a petition drive, put up a website, spoke to the media and, in the words of the Drama Guild, "focused community resistance in a remarkably effective way."

The school eventually agreed to reinstate the production on its original March schedule.

According to DLDF president John Weidman, "When a provocative piece of theater is cancelled anywhere, it has a chilling effect on the production of provocative theater pieces everywhere. In this instance, it was Larissa Mark's effort, commitment and leadership that ensured Jonathan Larson's right to be heard."

Correction

In last week's "Stage Buzz" column on the Greenwich actor Austin Cauldwell, appearing in the off Broadway play "Intimacy," I made a mistake on the director's name. He is Scott Elliott not "Ellis."